With a beautifully-crafted cel­e­bra­tion tai­lored to their clos­est friends and fam­i­ly and spread across a cou­ple of days amongst the sun-kissed vine­yards of Nia­gara on the Lake, Melanie and Carey’s wed­ding is one of the most epic films we have ever put togeth­er. Start­ing with the exquisitely-told sto­ry of how they met at a par­ty in Toron­to, the nar­ra­tive goes on to take a life of its own using their speech­es and vows to tell the sto­ry of their day, their rela­tion­ship thus far, and what it has and will become. It’s a com­plex and inter­wo­ven nar­ra­tive that frames all the dif­fer­ent ele­ments that make this film so spe­cial: the bohemi­an, picnic-style rehearsal din­ner at the Wood­burn Inn, their per­fect­ly infor­mal speech­es, the inti­mate cer­e­mo­ny tucked away on the edge of the Ridge­point Win­ery vine­yards, and the rus­tic open-air din­ner that followed.

It’s a com­plex and inter­wo­ven nar­ra­tive that frames all the dif­fer­ent ele­ments that make this film so special.

Two things were clear to us from our first meet­ing with Mel and Carey well over a year before their wed­ding week­end: 1) it was going to be an intri­cate­ly designed, family-centered cel­e­bra­tion with lots of mov­ing parts and (2) wed­ding cin­e­matog­ra­phy was very impor­tant to them. They had ideas, both tech­ni­cal and cre­ative, which they were eager to incor­po­rate into their sto­ry, which in turn inspired us in what quick­ly became one of our most expan­sive tech­ni­cal under­tak­ings for a wed­ding. From drones, to hop­ping in the back of our car with the Movi to fol­low the couple’s dri­ve into the vine­yard, crank­ing the low-light capac­i­ties of the C100s to film their rehearsal speech­es, there is not a sin­gle tool in our arse­nal that wasn’t used through­out the two days.

Yet as intense as this process sounds and as packed as Mel and Carey’s cel­e­bra­tions were, you wouldn’t be able to tell from their wed­ding film. The result is so immer­sive and flows so effort­less­ly from one scene to the next, blend­ing the rehearsal din­ner with the wed­ding day into one beau­ti­ful story.

It took a vil­lage of extreme­ly tal­ent­ed peo­ple for this to come togeth­er: Danielle of Shaw Events who brought Mel and Carey’s entire vision to life, When He Found Her, Bloom & Co., Flour­ish Cal­lig­ra­phy, and count­less oth­ers. Best team 🙌🏻